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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/30094023">The Music Box (Harold's Story)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/theshortauthoress/pseuds/theshortauthoress'>theshortauthoress</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Bellows Book [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Child Neglect, Horror, I feel like she would have went for psychological terror to avenge herself rather than a lot of gore, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, PSA the bellows are awful, Past Abuse, Sarah deserved the world, That's how I'm writing her anyways, but like middle school level horror, except sarah, this is inspired by both the books and the movie</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 22:02:06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,633</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/30094023</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/theshortauthoress/pseuds/theshortauthoress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"Harold could still hear the faint notes of Sarah’s music box. It was as if the sound now rose from within him."<br/> Sarah Bellows wrote a story for each member of her family. This is Harold's story.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Bellows Book [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2220027</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Music Box (Harold's Story)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In the months after his mother’s disappearance, Harold did his best to go on with life as he had before. Deodat worked harder at the mill than he ever had before, causing Harold to work harder as well. Ephraim soon became even more involved at Pennhurst “caring” for his patients. Gertrude, as always, kept to herself. She was seemingly least affected by Delanie’s disappearance. Of course, she was saddened by her son’s mourning, but Delanie was not her daughter, so why should she care?</p><p>It had been 4 months now since Sarah had left for Pennhurst, and 2 since she had died. Despite this, Harold’s ankle had not yet healed. It was still swollen and warm to the touch. He could walk on it, but not well. Ephraim had inspected it many times over, even going so far as to have a new x-ray machine brought from Pennhurst to the mansion, but nothing came of it. Perhaps at first, the slowed healing was due to how demanding Harold’s job at the mill was, but it had been far too long for such a minor injury to not have healed. As far as the doctors could tell, there was nothing wrong with Harold.</p><p>Harold himself begged to differ.</p><p>The family carried on with discreet searches for Delanie but eventually gave them up due to a lack of any sort of evidence. Officially, she had temporarily left Mill Valley due to the grief she had endured from Sarah’s actions and her eventual death. At least, that’s what they told the paper when rumors started to swirl.</p><p>Another late night at the mill had brought Deodat and Harold home late. Ephraim greeted them with a plain stew and stale bread. None of the men were very good cooks, but Delanie herself hadn’t been either. Who needed to be, when you had servants to tend to your every beck and call?</p><p>We need a new maid, thought Harold. Someone who can cook as well as Sylvie did.</p><p>The trio ate in silence, casting an occasional glance at the wall where the family portrait once hung. It had not returned to its place since the night Delanie covered Sarah’s image in a fit of rage.</p><p>After dinner, they retired to the parlor like usual. If Delanie was present they might have played a game of whist, but instead, they settled for an evening of reading and conversation. Ephraim read from The Lancet and explained the newest procedures.</p><p>“Here father, you might find this interesting,” Ephraim exclaimed. “They write here about the story of a man whose ear had been bitten off by a horse. They were able to reattach it somehow, and the flesh healed as if it had never been damaged. It’s quite fascinating, really.”</p><p>Deodat hummed in acknowledgment and nodded at his own book. “Yes, it seems interesting.”</p><p>Skimming through the journal, Ephraim found another interesting article. “And here, they teach one how to administer chloroform.”</p><p>That would have been useful for Sarah, he thought.</p><p>Scanning further through the pages, he found another article, this one less interesting to him than the former two but no less captivating.</p><p>“Hospital Abuse,” it read.</p><p>Abuse.</p><p>Ephraim knew that what he had done to Sarah was wrong. Her blood was on his hands, and he knew it, but he didn’t regret what he did.</p><p>Sarah had always been an inconvenience to him. She had been a threat to the family’s reputation, and later to his career. She had always been a problem, even when she was a child.</p><p>It was her fault that Mother was gone. Sarah drew mother to madness, he thought. She caused problems and she deserved what she got.</p><p>That’s what Mother would have said, and she would have been right!</p><p>In the end, he felt no pity for Sarah.</p><p>He did, however, feel concern for what would happen if the world came to know of what he did to Sarah in Pennhurst. The “treatments” he inflicted upon her were nothing short of torture, and Ephraim knew this. Even his colleagues seemed concerned by the extreme “treatments” he ordered for Sarah, and they truly believed that she had murdered the children.</p><p>Truth be told, he delighted in it. For him, Sarah represented all of his failures and mistakes. She was the root of all of his faults, he was sure of it.</p><p>For him, to hurt Sarah was to free himself.</p><p>Deodat noticed the concentration and concern gracing his younger son’s face. “What does it say, son?”</p><p>“Hospital abuse. It’s about hospital abuse,” came the serious reply.</p><p>Ephraim was always serious. He rarely showed his emotions.</p><p>Harold, meanwhile, sat absentmindedly shuffling a deck of cards. At the mention of abuse, similar thoughts to Ephraim’s ran through his mind, but Harold too felt no guilt.</p><p>For Harold, Sarah represented his inadequacy. Despite the fact that he was the elder son, he wasn’t a prestigious doctor like Ephraim. He was set to inherit the paper mill upon his father’s retirement. It was a profitable position to be certain, but he would not be remembered as greatly as his brother would be, and he knew it. The Bellows family was well-loved in Mill Valley. If not for them and their mill, the town and its people would have starved long ago. While Harold would be remembered in the small town of Mill Valley for his future ownership of the Bellows Paper Mill, Ephraim would be remembered for his great accomplishments as a doctor.</p><p>For Harold, Sarah represented this. She was proof of the family’s faulty genes. Perhaps he had inherited them too.</p><p>Harold loved his brother, but he hated his own failure.</p><p>For Deodat, his hatred of Sarah was much simpler. She was a threat to the family’s wealth. She threatened the success of her brothers, his sons, simply by her own existence.</p><p>If the world had been a different place, perhaps he could have learned to love his daughter, but as it stood, he could not.</p><p>In a world like theirs, the only place a person like Sarah would be accepted was in a circus, and Deodat Bellows would not have his reputation ruined by having his own blood be made into a sideshow act.</p><p>To allow Sarah into the world would have allowed her to be open to ridicule, not that he cared about her feelings in such a way. It would have allowed him to be open to ridicule, and so he had no problem hiding her away.</p><p>Truthfully, he didn’t care for her feelings. She was just the shameful thing they hid in the basement, and later sent to the asylum when she proved herself to be too much of a handful.</p><p>She had inherited his stubbornness. Deodat would acknowledge that much, at least.</p><p>The trio went to bed that night dealing with their own anger and frustration. Their family had long been fueled by hate and vitriol, even before they came to Mill Valley. It ran in their blood, and only Sarah seemed to have escaped that awful inheritance in life. Perhaps that was yet another reason why they hated her so deeply.</p><p>Harold awoke sometime late during the night, feeling more pain in his ankle than he ever had before. The house was deathly silent, and not even the sounds of the wooden frame settling could be heard. Although he couldn’t be sure, he could have sworn that there was a bit of straw protruding from his ankle. He shook his head in dismissal, deciding that it was only the dim light and lack of sleep that caused such a delusion. He laid there for a moment waiting for the pain to subside, which it eventually did.</p><p>And for a moment, he could have sworn that he heard the faint notes of Sarah’s music box and the soft scritch-scratch of a pen. Before he knew, he was soundly asleep again, the pain in his ankle a distant memory.</p><p> </p><p>When Harold awoke again he was no longer in his bed. Nor was he in the Bellows mansion, for that matter.</p><p>He was in a field, and his arms felt rather stiff. So did his legs, now that he thought of it. He could see the sun coming over the horizon, painting the sky in a brilliant mix of orange and yellow. He thought that he could hear roosters crowing in the distance, but he really couldn’t be sure. His hearing was muffled as well, almost as if his ears were full of straw.</p><p>Harold tried to move but quickly found that he could not. He struggled as he tried to move his limbs, but they remained stiff.</p><p>As he struggled he began to itch, and it felt as though he was surrounded by straw, but that was impossible.</p><p>Soon Harold found it impossible to even blink. He struggled to close his eyes, but no matter how hard he tried he could not. He began to cough now, coughing up bits of hay and dirt. His throat began to fill with straw, his lungs taking in more straw than they did air.</p><p>He fought hard to move now, but it was even harder than before. His skin seemed drier now too as if it was becoming more like fabric than flesh. As he became more straw than man, Harold could still hear the faint notes of Sarah’s music box. Although he no longer had ears, he heard it still. It was as if the sound now rose from within him.</p><p>As the sun rose higher in the sky, Harold’s eyes turned to glass, and he saw no more.</p><p>That very morning a young boy found Harold in the field, and proudly ran to his father.</p><p>“Look, father!” the boy cried.</p><p>“We have a new scarecrow!”</p>
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